


Sistinas

by surreallis



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-06
Updated: 2010-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 01:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surreallis/pseuds/surreallis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn't quite the only man left alive in Atlantis, but it's really a matter of semantics. A friend is a friend, dead or... undead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sistinas

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place early in season one. Before contact with Earth was established.

_take my hand.   
you'll never find another quite like mine  
if you look, you'll find that i'm the lonely one._

the sun don't shine  
the wind won't blow  
when you go hide  
without your love  
i'm lonely deep inside.   
(sistinas- danzig)

**

 

Rodney McKay talked as much in death as he did in life. And John Sheppard thought that was damn funny. Sad in its own way, of course, but John had been through that stage of tears and found it unhelpful at the least.

"Hey, Rodney," John called to the moaning and scratching outside of the laboratory door. "How do you spell 'loquacious'?"

There was a sudden silence beyond the door, as if John's voice had confused the dead man outside. And maybe it had... Rodney's brain wasn't really firing on all cylinders anymore. But then the slow, steady, meaty thumps of fists hitting triennium began again, punctuated by garbled grunts.

John sighed and looked down at his crossword puzzle. "Thanks, man." He penciled in the word and squinted at it. It didn't look right. It raised a red flag in his brain that maybe he needed to take a second look. Sort of the way he looked at Rodney now. When he looked at Rodney, he got that same red flag, like he needed to look again at the gray flesh petrifying into a mask, because there was still something familiar there. Some way the mouth turned down at the corners, some way the eyes lit up when they saw him, as if the world's largest buffet was being laid before them. Sometimes he heard a hint of that sarcastic voice behind the mutters and the moaning. Sometimes those electrical impulses that still coursed through McKay's nervous system hit the right sequence and for one brief moment Rodney was still standing there in front of him, a beautiful corpse.

The thumping stopped, and John lifted his head, listening. He heard a faint shuffling growing more distant. He yawned and stretched and glanced at his watch. It was Rodney's change of station, and it was just as well. It was late morning, and John could eat. He rose slowly and started gathering the gear that would take him to the kitchen and on a patrol of the empty halls of Atlantis. Field jacket, flashlight, utility knife, power bars and water (in case Rodney was having a "smart" day and John was trapped for a while), P-90 and… He ran a finger over the 9mm Colt laying, black and gleaming, on the tabletop. He kept it reverently cleaned and oiled, although it had been- he glanced at his calendar- weeks since it had been used. He ejected the clip to check the load. Felt reassurance at the sight of the 2 golden metal jackets shining inside. He slid the clip back into place and tucked the pistol carefully into a shoulder holster. Then he waited. It would take Rodney several long minutes to walk around to the other doorway that led into John's new quarters, and sometimes he got confused halfway around and just returned to the first door.

John had tried living in his original quarters right after... it. He had no better word for what had happened to Atlantis, so he just called it, well, 'it'. For a while, when Rodney was still alive and panicking and capable of reason, John had referred to it as 'The Day Atlantis Went Living Dead', but all the fun had gone out of that without anyone to appreciate the effort. He'd had to move to the lab a few days later when he'd realized the disadvantages of a single entrance and exit with a base-full of zombies after your brains. Sneaky bastards. Always lying in wait.

When the telltale clatter of thumps and scratching began at the second laboratory door, John headed for the first with casual intent. He was still on guard as it shushed open, even though it had been nearly 2 weeks since anyone but Rodney, and himself, had shuffled through the corridors.

There was still no one else.

John strolled down the halls, humming under his breath. The lights flickered from time to time, and occasionally the power would stutter and stop and then kick back to life with a steady, low hum. John wasn't sure what was wrong with it. Power consumption in the city was at an all-time low, and he was pretty sure the ZPM they had was going strong, but there were other things in the loop. Circuits and fuses and power regulators. Alien viruses. Things that worked beyond his view and he had no idea how to fix. Maybe once Rodney was gone...

He listened for the inevitable shuffling behind him. It was there, far in the distance, along with the occasional shriek of outrage. Dead or alive, Rodney McKay didn't like exercise, and he was damned pissed when John wouldn't sit still and allow Rodney to dig determinedly at the metal walls of his room.

"Soup's on, Rodney!" John called. "Don't be late." He glanced into the gateroom as he trudged by. Dark heaps of clothing and gray matter littered the floor and workstations. The room was dark and closed-off and the gate itself shimmered in the dark, event horizon glittering like liquid. It hadn't closed since the day it last opened, admitting the scourge that swept through Atlantis and turned the living into the dead but wouldn't let them rest. McKay and Zelenka hadn't had time to figure out what had happened, or why the gate wouldn't close, before everything had gone to hell.

Now, John just didn't go there anymore. Nothing else had ever come through, but maybe nothing else needed to.

Funny how he felt like the last man on Earth when he wasn't even on Earth. Earth was still safe and turning, or at least had been the last he knew, and no one there knew what was going on here. Maybe they never would. Shame. He could see how it might make a great horror movie a few years down the road. Something for the kids to enjoy on Halloween. He wondered whom they'd get to play him.

In the kitchen, he filled his water bottle and took a frying pan off the counter. He was trying to save the MRE's in case the power gave out completely. In the freezer, back-up generators still chugging along, he stepped carefully around the frozen human form wrapped in a tarp.

"Hi, Lizzie," He said softly, grabbing the bacon off of the shelf over her body. Impending doom made for a strong stomach. "Cold enough for you?" She didn't answer, and he didn't laugh. The joke had lost something over the long weeks of solitude.

For a time it had been him, Rodney and Liz, alone and alive, the three musketeers at the end of the universe. The rest had been dead and shambling through Atlantis, or had taken themselves out, as Ford had, when they'd realized they'd been bitten and infected. Slowly, the three of them had put the rest down, and John had still had hope then because he had Liz's cool head and Rodney's razor-sharp brain and there was no way they _weren't_ getting out of this.

Except Rodney had been bitten and then Liz couldn't kill him, and it had all gone to shit while John was out walking the far hangar decks and taking inventory on their ships.

He'd kept them for a while, as bad as they were. He'd watched their eyes grow sunken and dead. He'd watched their skin turn into... something else. He'd listened as their vocal cords decayed and spoiled. And he couldn't kill them. Not even as they shuffled in circles and waited for any glimpse of him, eyes glittering as they gazed at him hungrily.

Soon enough though, two were too much for him, and Liz's cool head was amazingly analytical, even as it turned to mush. Eventually, she'd learned to anticipate his moves, and she'd started waiting for him in the kitchen. He'd finally had to take her out, sending a merciful bullet through that fine mind and sending her to rest.

He tried not to think about why he couldn't give that same mercy to Rodney. It just didn't seem like a huge crime to be selfish anymore.

He fried up some bacon with powdered eggs, keeping an eye on the door. It was a timing thing. Rodney was a creature of habit, and he got slower as the days passed. John wondered if he'd starve to death or just fade away. Or maybe he'd just keep going until he fell apart.

No. Not that long. John would find it in himself to end it before then. He felt for the Colt in the shoulder holster with its 2 shiny shots of mercy. One for Rodney. One for...

Why wouldn't the puddle-jumpers run? What was it about that initial burst of energy through the stargate that had corrupted the power systems of every machine in Atlantis? He'd tried everything he could think of with no joy.

For a while he'd thought about building a raft.

He needed Rodney.

He could smell that dry-husk smell that came before Mckay these days, so he took his plate with him and started back to the lab. He didn't feel like fucking around with the puddle-jumpers today. Maybe he'd take a line and try and fish for whatever God forsaken creatures lived in these seas. Or maybe he'd just sleep the day away until it was time to eat again. He had a crossword puzzle to finish anyway.

"Come on, McKay," he grinned, passing Rodney's gray form in the hall. "Double-time, soldier!"

Rodney reached for him, a little quicker than John had anticipated. John wrenched away from the ragged fingertips, worn away from their single-minded determination to get to him as he slept. He almost spilled his lunch but saved it at the last moment. He skipped a few steps up the hall and then glanced back. Rodney staggered around on unsteady feet, and his sallow look gave him an almost long-suffering expression. John smiled and then had to fight the rising peal of laughter in his chest. He wasn't sure, but he thought that if he let it out... he might not be able to stop.

He walked hurriedly back to the lab and locked himself in.

It took Rodney until almost nightfall to find his way back to the lab. John had started to worry that maybe he'd finally succumbed. He didn't like the ache that ripped through his gut at the thought of really being the last man on Atlantis. Even more, he hated the relief he felt when the shuffling and the thumping and the moaning started outside his door again.

At least McKay had an excuse for his horrible behavior.

He took the Colt and sat at the table for a while. He slid the clip through his fingers, spinning it this way and that. Redemption? Or wasted effort? Rest or unrest? He could always let McKay take a bite out of him. Give his friend one last smorgasbord and then join him in his madness. It'd be Sheppard and McKay side by side again, never mind the petrifaction and the copious drooling or lack of grace. Maybe it wasn't painful. Maybe it was sort of like living in a dream.

John pulled his blankets and his pillow off his bed and dragged them to the door. He settled down in the dark, Colt beneath his pillow, clip in his fingers, and watched the light under the door flicker with shadows of Rodney's movement.

"Hey, Rodney," John called. "How do you know when a zombie is tired?"

Rodney scratched at the door and muttered in turns of breath and groans.

"When he's dead on his feet!" John gave a bark of laughter at his own joke. Rodney began thumping against the door again.

John sighed and blinked at the water in his eyes. He turned onto his side and set the clip beside him on the floor. He stared at it. "Hey, Rodney," he called again, his voice breaking. "Tomorrow, I promise. You can rest."

The thumps stopped, and John heard something heavy slide down the surface of the door. He watched as a shadow settled in front of the light at the bottom. Rodney scratched lightly at the bottom of the door.

John scratched at the door lightly in return. "And maybe I can too... "

~end~


End file.
